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Comments/Requests

Image/text alignment problem

As noted in the edit summary, I took the liberty of inserting a newline in your user page to fix an image/text alignment problem. When a right-aligned [[Image]] link is followed on the same line by text, some browsers (I.E. 5.0, at least) align the text to the right, too. Besides looking wrong, this makes the text easy to miss, especially when it's at the very top of the page. I think I've seen this problem in some articles, as well. Something to keep in mind.... - dcljr 12:24, 13 February 2007 (CST)

Cite.php for ref's

In Wikipedia and other Wikimedia wikis, the Cite.php extension allows for easy creation and maintenance of footnotes in articles using <ref></ref> and <reference/> tags. I've encountered a few cases were this would be really helpful to have here. According to documentation at the first link above, the extension requires at least MediaWiki 1.6x, so it should work for us. I would suggest we upgrade to a newer MediaWiki version anyway, but moving to 1.7x would also require an upgrade to PhP 5. Maybe a task for this summer? <g> - dcljr 19:59, 30 March 2007 (CDT)

Sandbox

I noticed someone created Project:Sandbox back in Feb. Since we probably should have such a page, I've gone ahead and created a template-header for it, Template:Sandbox header, explaining what the Sandbox is for, along with a "testing" template called Template:Sandbox (not "Template:Testing" or similar) for use on the Sandbox page to test template behavior. Then, of course, the template itself needed a template-header, Template:Sandbox template header, to explain it.... Anyway, I hope everything is basically self-explanatory on the pages Project:Sandbox and Template:Sandbox. Just figured I'd give you a heads-up so you can "watch" the two "header" templates, if you want. (I would suggest protecting them, but that probably would be overkill. Sufficient to "watch" them for now.) - dcljr 17:52, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

Utility templates?

I've been going through categorizing and describing our various templates (with mixed results). Since you created Category:Utility templates, I guess I should ask you what your definition of a "utility template" is. Based on the single template that was in the category at the time I came across it (Template:If), I guessed it was for templates that are primarily for use in other templates, to make their "code" simpler (like subroutines in computer programming). But now I don't know what to do with templates like Template:Quote-source and Template:Comment-box1. Do you think either of those should be called "Utility templates" and the definition expanded? - dcljr 15:53, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

I'm not User:Sans Deity, but I think you're right, that utility templates are ones used for building or simplifying other templates; infrastructure, not content.

Since Template:Quote-source and Template:Comment-box1 are directly used in various pages, I wouldn't call them utility templates. I think if there were a template that said, "This <topic>-related article is a stub", that could be included in other templates that specified a topic, then that generic template would be a utility template. But that's just my opinion. --Arensb 16:09, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

In progress

It seems you've tagged a couple of articles as works in progress and not found the time to return to them for further expansion. Understandable... but maybe we should have a policy about that template staying on articles for too long. For example, if there's no edits by the original "tagging" author in a month, say, editors are free to remove the template or replace it with another (e.g., stub) template, as appropriate. In particular, we should try to avoid situations where the template stays on an article for many months with no edits or is placed on a stubby article where "progress" hasn't really even begun. Not meaning to be overly critical, but these two cases seemed somewhat "suboptimal"... - dcljr 17:58, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

Good catch. The mormon page was someone else's work...I just tagged it for them as an example of what they should do until they were done. The prophecy page was one I wanted to do, but never got to. They're both cleared. I think a month is probably more than enough. Any work in progress that's seen no activity for a month should be fair game to anyone - regardless of who tagged it. Sans Deity 23:08, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

Wiki spam galore

Obviously you've noticed how this spam is getting ridiculously out of hand. Have you seen this page? It's full of useful suggestions for keeping the spam under control.

Do we currently prevent the page histories from showing up in search engines? If not, we definitely should, as the spammers may be benefiting from product placement even after we roll back their crap.

Also, how many people currently have the authority to block accounts? I wouldn't mind giving that permission to a few others. However, since they keep autogenerating random IDs, I'm not sure if there's even a point to blocking the accounts. Perhaps we should do something to prevent the types of accounts they're making, something like this:

I was looking into solutions earlier. I think, considering the small community here, that I may either disable account creation (and let sysops manually add new editors) or try to create some custom user groups (bureaucrats, sysops, editors, n00b) so that no one can edit until their account has been flagged for it.

Unfortunately, this hasn't been easy. Most of the solutions are very slap-dash, as the software was originally designed to be open to edits from everyone. I'm hoping to have this solved by the end of the week. I should have some time this afternoon to investigate solutions. Sans Deity 10:32, 12 June 2007 (CDT)

Killing the vandals

I've made it a bit more difficult on the vandals. I've added a new requirement for any new users - they must verify an e-mail address.

It's an extra hoop that may kill the vandals, especially if they are bots. If it doesn't work, I'll take additional steps. Sans Deity 12:26, 12 June 2007 (CDT)

That seems to have done the trick for now. Good job, Matt! --Kazim 11:13, 13 June 2007 (CDT)

I've also tried to start using the "Mark as patrolled" feature a bit more. When you select a "diff" from the Recent changes page (not from a page's history, though), you can mark the edit as "patrolled" (if it hasn't already been done), meaning it was a legitimate edit. Unpatrolled edits are marked with a red exclamation point (!) on the Recent changes page. Only admins can mark edits as patrolled. - dcljr 14:01, 14 June 2007 (CDT)